Breathe
By Norma Aceves, Federal Deputy, Master in Parliamentary Law at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México.
In our consciousness we recognize three states of time; past, present and future; we conjugate was, is and will be; thinking that we can only influence the present, remember the past and long for the future; there is nothing more to do and live intensely the immediate instant.
But possibly every instant that we live, has the capacity to resignify the past and build the future, we cannot change the facts that have already happened or anticipate what has not yet happened; what it is about is to rewrite our history and to build bases so that we have some certainty about the future.
That is the purpose of the commemoration of the National Day of Women with Disabilities, because we aspire to spread our memory and create a better image of the future.
Women with disabilities in the past we were invisible, captives in homes, hospitals and mental health institutions; silenced by society, aspirants of charity, incomplete and useless for education, employment, motherhood. Thus, women with disabilities in our past are an accident in the life of society, anomalies and exceptionalities, we lived hidden from the world.
Some of them, like Gabriela, (Gabriela not Gaby), fought to make themselves heard, Gabriela was a student, writer, mother; surely she was never able to vote, as well as to have a decent job. She left the University on two occasions because it was not accessible; but perhaps with the movement of the toes of one foot, she managed to move the world and even more difficult to move consciences.
That is why, on her birthday, September 12, we commemorate the National Day of Women with Disabilities, and in her example we want to resignify our past, to tell the world, we exist! In the past and the present, and in every moment we live, is all our memory.
We have to raise our voices for those who were, to give meaning and value to their lives, so that we have memory and know where we come from, to define where we want to go.
We are not an anomaly, nor an exception, we are part of the history of humanity; we are women and we want our past to be part of the memory of all generations; we must not resign ourselves to erase our past, we are not only discrimination and captivity, we are struggle, tenacity, love and sisterhood.
With our past we want to build the space we share, with the other women, because if there are no women with disabilities, we are not all; it cannot be said that we are just integrating into feminism, we have always had the will and the strength of spirit to denounce and change things we have been here, before and now.
But without the struggle of millions of women with disabilities we could not have the voice and opportunities we have now; certainly in a limited way still, but we are resilient, because we have the desire to endure.
Disability has taught us that patience leads to tenacity, we are like the drop of water that by persistence makes its way through the rocks; since we often receive a negative response, we have learned to try, until it happens; sometimes we achieve difficult goals, because we never knew they were impossible.
That is why we live each moment to the fullest, but the future is always uncertain, loneliness, old age, poverty and disease, gird our thoughts, sometimes the word "future" represents nothing more than fear.
That is the reason to change the present, so that the future offers us hope, but also to pave the way for those to come, because as long as humanity exists, women with disabilities will endure; our sisterhood is expressed with those we share time and space and with those who have gone and those who one day will be born.
In our memory, we want to say to the women with disabilities of the future, keep trying, we encourage you because in our time, we were already thinking about you, that you could have the opportunities that we did not have, just as Gabriela fought to break all our captivities.
Just as the archaeologist investigates the vestiges to re-signify the past of our cultures, women with disabilities today want to leave testimony and memory, to resist and endure.
Today we demand everything that is rightfully ours, we want to be mothers, students, wives, workers, businesswomen, politicians. Sometimes when other people see us in schools, transportation, jobs and elected positions, we seem exceptional; what we fight for today is that tomorrow that will be the rule.
Women with disabilities today, in every second of our lives, we have the possibility to conjugate the three states of time, that is our duty; we are before the moment in which the barriers that separate us from other women, are demolished and we are part of a single memory that holds hands, while in a small window of light the future is glimpsed, listening in unison in all states of time,
Women with disabilities exist!
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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